


Glass Ceiling

by jetsam



Category: Bleach
Genre: 100-1000 Words, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-07
Updated: 2010-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-13 02:38:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/131907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jetsam/pseuds/jetsam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aizen/Urahara, no god beside me</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glass Ceiling

It doesn't take Urahara long to work out that he's different from the other children. They are content to follow the paths their families give them, never questioning what they see.

Urahara likes questions. 'Why' is nearly his first word, and certainly his most used. It ranks far, far above 'daddy' - questions are reliably constant companions and he knows his father rather more by his conspicuous absence.

He asks Yoruichi, once, whether she ever wants to choose her own path, and whether she really thinks it's a good idea to cut the Chamber of 46 off from the people they are ruling. She just laughs at him.

"But that's how the King made it," she says, careless as she sprawls on her back in the grass. "And it works."

He doesn't have an answer to that.

Urahara is in the Academy before he finds someone who is asking the same questions as him. They never talk about it, but he can see Aizen frowning when the instructor details a point of law with no explanation, or explains are things are so 'because they have always been so'. As they work their ways up through the ranks at a startling pace, Urahara is constantly aware of Aizen at his shoulder, pushing him higher and higher in a challenge that must be answered.

Aizen doesn't seem to have the same genius, the drive to prove himself the best. Urahara wonders if this is because Aizen's curiosity is purely intellectual or if there is something simmering below the surface, ambition uncapped by a trusted lord.

Urahara leaves to pursue different challenges, when Soul Society no longer tolerates him. Aizen stays, apparently content.

"Why?" Urahara wants to ask him but he knows all the answer he'll get is a half-smile and an enigmatic shrug, elegant as all of Aizen's movements. Besides, Urahara is on the run and scarcely has time to speak to Yoruichi before he vanishes.

Aizen answers the question in the end.

"An opening is an invitation," his sword says as they face each other in earnest at last, just as their instructors in the Academy said about their clumsy fencing.

He doesn't have long to consider the dilemna. Maybe there are two of them headed for the one vacancy.

Urahara releases his bankai.


End file.
